“Take your hands off me!” I forced my throat
to let me speak again, trying to wriggle free from his touch. But
the sound barely came out.
He ignored me. “She is delicious.”
Tristan was breathing hard and ferociously,
practically glowing with madness. I turned into an ice statue,
unable to move. Neither of us could do anything. My unsteady legs
could barely hold me up and a move from Tristan meant a slash
across my neck. We were trapped.
“Oh, don’t panic comrade. I’ll give her to
you after I'm done. At least, a part of her,” he said with a grin,
not taking his eyes off of him. But all of a sudden, as if
something had changed, the stiffness in his body loosened. “You
know what? I really need some privacy and since it seems you’re a
peeping tom”—he released my neck and pushed me forward—“You can
have her. Courtesy of the house.”
I fell to the ground, landing with my hip
first then on my back. Even if my body hurt, the pain wasn’t a
barrier to knowledge. I knew my release wasn't for anything.
Finding out though wasn't in my plans. I scrambled across the moss
without taking my eyes from Gavran’s. Tiny pebbles scraped my
hands, but the pain wasn't what stopped me. I stopped because I
couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Four pairs of amber feline
eyes were glowing in the dark behind Gavran. Tristan was right.
There wasn’t just one outsider in town. There were five. The wicked
smile twisting Gavran’s lips had an edge of victory, as if he’d won
a battle.
My hair waved wildly in the wind, locks
merging frantically in the darkness. Heavy clouds had covered the
full moon, concealing everything below in dark shadows. The trees
sounded more hysterical, as if they were aware of the danger. And
they weren’t the only ones. The sense of death paralyzed my entire
body.
I turned my head, my heart beating fast, and
looked back at Tristan. He hadn’t moved. He was still staring
straight at Gavran with menacing eyes, his iris shooting silver
fire in the raven-colored blackness.
I understood now why he hadn’t come to help
me. A tiny movement on his part would set off a fight. And we were
at a huge disadvantage. Even in the Shifter world being outnumbered
wasn’t good.
As quick as that thought came, it left. Four
Shifters were standing next to Tristan now, staring with avid anger
behind me.
The pack
, I thought, relieved.
Finally
. It
looked as if the lightning in the skies was thundering their
arrival. My pulse was soaring in happiness.
The four of them looked amazing and dangerous
at the same time. The cracking flashes above gave me short glimpses
of their whole appearance. They looked like Tristan, but unlike
him, their bare skin was normal, and their bodies slightly coated
with hair—much less than some men I’d already seen in the human
world. I recognized two of them, the tallest of the pack. Elan, the
one with the brown Mohawk and Mingan, the one with the sleek pony
tail. Like Tristan, their hair seemed longer. The one on the other
side was Vincent. The waves in his hair looked wilder and—a flash
of a lightning lit him once more—yes, they had that beautiful
mahogany color. And the one ahead of Tristan, leading the point of
their “V” formation, and definitely the alpha male of the pack, was
Julian. He had the majestic fur of a Gray Wolf. It wasn’t as light
as the others. The skin of his torso was hidden underneath
beautiful gray-white hair, and a dark collar surrounded his neck,
fusing with the dark hair on top of his head. His amber eyes glowed
with golden intensity, but he appeared calmer and steadier than the
rest of the pack.
He lowered his eyes to look at me and gave a
short nod, as if telling me something. But I didn’t grasp the
meaning. I had no clue. The telepathy thing was starting to bug me,
especially around situations like these where straight
communication was a must. He looked back at me, noticing I hadn’t
move and nodded behind him.
Was he telling me to go and stay behind them?
Rain started to fall and forced me to move. I had no other option.
I summoned all the strength left in my body and stood up. I
staggered a little at first, almost collapsing to the ground again,
but Julian’s anxious eyes made me refocus. I didn’t want to make a
bad movement and ruin everything.
I carried on, trying to keep my balance, and
walked next to Tristan. He glanced at me for a second without
losing the sizzling fiery in his eyes, and looked away. Elan was at
his back, staring in the same direction with dark anger.
I stepped behind him and turned to look at
our rivals. Gavran was glaring steadily at Julian. It looked like
they were having a mind-to-mind conversation. The rest of the
bugbears were standing on both sides of Gavran now, their
expressions a dreadful promise of torture and death. They were
wickedly bestial, still human-like, but bestial, though amid them,
a spiky white-blond haired one looked like a bloodcurdling punk
Shifter.
I didn’t want Tristan and the others to fight
them. Goose bumps tightened my skin. No. I couldn’t let this
happen. I suddenly wanted to fight, fight with all my being. “Elan,
please, listen to me,” I whispered leaning closer to him. “Don’t do
this. If they want me, I’ll go to them. But not all of you. I can’t
let that happen.” I was desperate, shivering in the cold rain. I
knew he could hear me with those crazy sound-detectors of his. But
Elan only held out a restraining hand, as if to push me back, not
even sparing me a glance.
Ugh, stupid Elan! Why were men so willful in
these testosterone-filled situations? I didn’t want this. And
Tristan…no. No!
“I don’t think so,” Gavran suddenly said in a
deep voice.
Everybody crouched. The thunder roared across
the clouds.
Gavran smirked and bawled in a husky tone.
“Let the fun begin!”
In a matter of seconds, Gavran’s skin
stretched, as if made of rubber, and he transformed into the same
creatures next to him, only he looked bigger and fiercer. After
that, everything happened extremely fast, inhumanly fast.
The last thing my eyes saw was both packs
preparing to charge and then suddenly vanishing in the black air.
My ears detected sporadic sharp sounds all over the place. But the
worst part of being in the middle of an invisible Shifter battle
was the rainy silence between those snarls, a dead serious silence
I would’ve never imagined possible in a fight. If a human passed
by, he wouldn’t have noticed anything, just the rumbling sounds
rocking in the skies that merged perfectly with the hidden ones
below.
I looked around anxious, trying to spot
something through the ghastly woods. I was breathing deep and hard,
my hair and clothes completely soaked. I couldn’t stop thinking
about something bad happening to Tristan. I felt so powerless and
frustrated. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. There was only
cold dark rain pouring over what had turned into a masked
battleground.
No! What am I supposed to do? Sit and wait?
My legs answered first. The ground was suddenly pulling me down
and… bam! A heavy sound shook the earth, taking me down and making
me fall on my sore hip once again. But pain wasn’t something I
could think of at this moment. My heart was trembling with fear and
anguish. Who had fallen? Who was out? I wanted to scream Tristan’s
name to end the choking despair.
You can’t. You can’t do it
. I needed
to be strong, for him, for the pack. I tried to get up, struggling
to ignore the strong magnet drawing me down again. But I failed. I
couldn’t walk anymore. It was just like Gavran had said.
Worse, the heel of my boot was buried in the
ground.
A sudden growl hit my ears. I turned my head,
but Shifters were too fast to catch them with my eyes. They were
close, somewhere very near. I could hear the sharp sounds—crashes
against trees, bodies smashing into hard trunks. But whose
bodies?
I panted. The rumbles above were getting
deeper and I didn’t know what scared me the most, the bugbears or
the lightning that seemed to be really, really close.
I heard a sharp crash across. The immediate
thought of Tristan getting hurt flashed into my head. But a
different sound grasped my attention a few seconds later. I focused
on the dreadful, soul-ripping sound. It was a grating noise that
made the earth growl beneath me. I turned, and that’s when I saw
it.
A tree. A monstrous tree was
falling…towards…me.
In less than a heartbeat, I tried to pull out
the heel from the ground, but my strength wasn’t enough. The weird
tasting berries had drained it all out.
Come on! Come on damn boot!
The blood
was pumping in my veins, almost cutting off my breath. I looked up
and found the tree a few feet away, getting ready to crush my body
against the earth. I froze. This was really it. My time. And all of
it because of a stupid heel!
I shut my eyes and fisted my hands, burying
the nails in my palm. The tree was falling, closer and closer,
faster and faster, each quarter of a second dragging my inevitable
death.
But…it didn’t come.
My body was shoved out of the way. I landed
on my wounded back, with a snap of my head. Every corner of it
pulsed with pain. I opened my eyes and found Tristan’s strong arm
resting across my stomach. I turned my throbbing head and saw his
wonderful eyes just inches from mine. In the few seconds we
remained like this, laying on the ground next to each other, time
slowed down, like in movies.
The flash of lightning illuminated our faces
and I saw, in an odd slow-motion mode, his amazing features in
detail. He looked so beautiful and shocking at the same time.
Fright and wonder fused throughout my body. He was still the same
Tristan. I could see his beautiful soul through his spellbinding
eyes, eyes that were filled with anguish and deep devotion.
And…something amazing happened. I felt as if our souls fused into
one another. A strong explosion burst inside my chest, and an
invisible mist, as if suffused with sun, colors and delicate aromas
of spring flowers, swept over my body. It was absolute glory—a
vortex of bliss, joy and lights.
I didn’t know how but he was inside my chest
and I was inside of his, lost in the realm of his essence. We could
feel each other without touching and see our spirits without
looking.
But it didn't last long. His feline eyes
widened in incisive alarm and he rose and jumped across me. I
turned my head and a thunderous crushing sound shook the air. It
was Tristan, squashing one of the bugbears against a tree, which
ended up cracking and colliding into another tree behind.
The bugbear tried to escape, snarling and
twisting to get free. But Tristan’s swift motion caught him in a
half-second, knocking his body into another tree. The ferocious
Shifter shoved one of his loose hands to Tristan’s back and buried
the razor-sharp nails into his skin, tearing it deep. Thick blood
slid down his back and a deep growl rolled out from Tristan’s
throat. But the pain didn’t weaken him; it increased his strength.
He threw the bugbear to the ground, making the earth tremble, and
jumped onto his body in a blur, crushing it with violence. The
bugbear snarled in pain and fought back, placing his pawish foot on
one side of Tristan’s torso to shove him away. But his strength
wasn’t as powerful as Tristan’s.
Tristan grabbed the Shifter by the shoulders,
lifted him into the air, and launched him headfirst toward another
tree. Then, they disappeared, both of them, swallowed by the
dripping darkness. I was alone again, plastered to the mossy mud,
the scratches on my back burning with razorblade fire. I sat up, my
whole body shaking, and saw the dark shape of another vicious
bugbear standing just feet away from me, uncovered by the sudden
burst of radiant light coming from above. His amber demon-like eyes
were like a punch to my stomach.
I turned into stone, petrified. I wasn’t
breathing. I wasn’t blinking. My swollen veins thumped hard against
my skin and screamed in my ears "You're dead."
The vicious bugbear twisted up the corners of
his mouth into a deadly grin and he hurled himself toward me,
vanishing in the air. But an earthshaking lightning rolled out from
the sky and stopped him midway, striking the bugbear as if with
jagged streaks of silver fire. The heat reached my face and I felt
my hair rise. A few long seconds later, he fell to the ground.
I couldn’t see for a moment, blinded
temporarily by the intense light. White and silver stripes still
flashed in the darkness of my eyes. When my sight finally cleared,
I spotted Tristan’s silver eyes looking down at the Shifter wrapped
in spasms. Fierceness hardened his face, but his eyes showed
bewilderment, as if he couldn’t believe what'd just happened. He
looked up and stared at something across from him. I followed his
gaze and there, standing among two bulky trunks, was Elan—the long
Mohawk unmistakable. He too, seemed utterly surprised.
It looked like they were saying something to
each other in their minds—standard pack communication. Elan gave a
short nod and walked over the scorched body that was still making
sharp spasmodic jerks.
Tristan turned around and headed towards me,
walking slowly as if giving me time to calm down. I looked back at
Elan and saw him bend over the body. He lifted his back and with a
strong swaying motion of his other arm, ended up the shivers of the
scorched Shifter. It took me less than a second to realize what
he’d done.
Luckily, it was dark and drizzly, so seeing a
disjointed head wasn’t easy. Unless Shifter blood glowed in the
dark, which would be tremendously stomach-turning and odd. But
until now, that wasn’t the case.
I pulled my eyes away from the scene and saw
Tristan kneeling beside me, hand stretched in my direction. His
eyes didn’t look fierce anymore, but careful, extremely careful. My
whole body didn’t want to be careful, though. I needed him, needed
him more than ever. I pushed my hand to his, the texture of his
skin still soft like velvet, yet somehow rough. He smiled at me and
leaned over to take me in his arms, scooping me up as if I was the
most delicate crystal. He straightened his strong body, glanced at
me for a brief second, and then ran into the shadowy woods.